A two-year collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and advisers from the major national organizations of mediators produced a job analysis relevant to mediators involved in interpersonal disputes (i.e., divorce, community, formal parent-child mediation, etc.). One byproduct of the job analysis is an extensive list of the knowledge areas and skills important to effective job performance. This essay defines the knowledge and skill areas that emerged from the analysis.

No abstract

ABSTRACT* * * The Supreme Court has determined that obscene speech should not be protected under the First Amendment, but an unambiguous definition of obscenity is required if negative legal sanctions are to be enforced without jeopardizing due process. According to current guidelines, a media presentation of sexually explicit materials must exceed limits of sexual candor to be defined obscene. However, establishing such limits requires articulation of a normative standard for a specified population—a population defined by the court as being a community. The present research is designed to identify such limits of sexual candor within a community in the South. The results demonstrate the existence of ambiguity in the articulation of community standards. First, little consistency is found between personal standards and the perceptions of community standards. This lack of consistency presents a problem for jury deliberation since a single frame of reference is not available to guide jurors in reaching decisions on obscenity. Second, both perceptions of community standards and personal standards are significantly influenced by extracommunity factors of sex, age, race, education, religiosity, and moral rigidity. Existence of such effects raises the additional question of jury bias in the event that there is an overrepresentation of any one segment of the community on a jury.

This article uses several indicators of a mediator's orientation: (1) his or her goals, (2) focus on the process of mediation, (3) perceptions of personal strengths, (4) the signals that tell him or her that a mediation is working, and (5) his or her preferred outcome. We examine how select demographic and practice characteristics-sex, experience as a mediator, professional background, and organizational context-relate to orientations. The characteristics of sex and professional background significantly modify the general pattern in ways that confirm assumptions common in the literatures on negotiation and mediation.

No abstract